Posts from the “Books” Category

Debi Cornwall: Welcome to Camp America

Posted on January 17, 2018

Photo; Poolside. © Debi Cornwall

After 12 years working as a civil rights lawyer working with innocent DNA exonerees, Debi Cornwall made a major career change. Still invested in the lives of those wrongfully imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, Cornwall put down the legal pad and picked up the camera in order to address the issue from a different perspective.

While having dinner with a friend who represented Guantánamo detainees, Cornwall realised striking similarities between the prison and military industrial complexes. “The question of resilience after trauma and systemic abuses of power is something I have been fascinated by my entire life,” Cornwall explains.

“When I first started trying to contact them, I got zero response. Because who was I? No one wanted to take the risk on me at that point. On a whim, I decided I should try to figure out if I could get permission to photograph at Guantánamo to make a different kind of picture that will invite us to look again.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Photo; Marble Head Lanes. © Debi Cornwall

Photo: Mourad, French Algerian (France). Muslim Youth Counselor. Held: 2 years, 8 months, 1 day. Transferred: July 26, 2005. Charges: never filed in the U.S. French conviction reversed on appeal. © Debi Cornwall

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life

Posted on January 16, 2018

Candy Darling on Her Deathbed, 1973. Collection of Ronay and Richard Menschel. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Peter Hujar (1934–1987) is your favourite photographer’s photographer – a man who lived independently, crafting a life in downtown Manhattan that flourished between the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

Inside his East Village loft, Hujar mastered his craft, pursuing the art without the burdens of commerce. Liberated from the strictures of the market, Hujar created a body of work that is as broad in subject matter as it is refined in technique and as original in perspective.

A new exhibition, Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, looks at the work the legend left behind, three decades after his death. The show presents 140 photographs drawn from the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, the most comprehensive public collection of the artist’s work. Curated by Joel Smith, the exhibition adopts the traditional retrospective format while staying true to Hujar’s vision.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Ethyl Eichelberger as Minnie the Maid, 1981. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Christopher Street Pier, 1976. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Vince Aletti: Curator, Collector, Writer Extraordinaire

Posted on January 15, 2018

Vince Aletti has a way with words, an ability to cast an image in your mind’s eye as he describes a moment caught forevermore, with the photographic precision of the medium about which he writes. Equal parts critic, reporter, and curator, Aletti’s prose is poetic, perceptive, and always a pleasure to read, beautifully complementing the experience of the photograph itself.

The photograph has had a special place in Aletti’s life dating back to his childhood. He recalls, “My father was a camera club photographer, so I grew up with a darkroom in the house. I remember being with my father in the darkroom, watching photographs appear. It was like magic. It had a profound effect on me.

“My dad died when I was young and he left his archive of US Camera Annuals. On rainy days, I’d spend hours looking through those photo anthologies, going back again and again to images that fascinated me, like Irving Penn‘s “Summer Sleep,” and Avedon‘s portrait of Anna Magnani, and George Rodger‘s picture of naked Nuba wrestlers. Those books introduced me to photographs and photographers that still move me today. They gave me a deep background.”

Winner of the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for writing in 2005, Aletti is currently a photography critic for The New Yorker and Photograph. He was also the art editor of the Village Voice from 1994-2005. But for the first twenty years of his career, Aletti was a music critic. He was the first person to write about the emerging disco scene for Rolling Stone in 1973. Aletti’s book, The Disco Files 1973-78: New York’s Underground Week by Week (Djhistory.com) chronicles his famed column in Record World magazine; the book, first published in 2009, is now out of print and sells for over $100 on Amazon and is considered essential reading on this chapter in music history.

Yet his love of photography never left him. When offered the opportunity to begin reviewing photography shows for the Village Voice, he took it. Aletti remembers, “It was a break from the usual descriptions of club music. It gave me a good chance to expand. At the time, I was close friends with Peter Hujar. Spending a lot of time with him, seeing him at work, affected my thinking and writing about photography. I saw it not as an exalted undertaking, but as a way to for someone to make a living and express themselves at the same time in a very real way. For Peter, it was like putting life and feelings down in a picture, which is not what most people care to do these days. I’ve always been most excited by people whose work was soulful and based in their lives and feelings.

“After a few years of doing brief exhibition reviews, one of the first things I started to write at the Voice was profiles of photographers, one-page critical essays on people I was curious about, like Dawoud Bey. I wrote about new and emerging photographers–Andrea Modica, Sally Mann, Marco Breuer, Barbara Ess, Fazal Sheikh–and why they did what they did. Personally, I’m very drawn to portraiture, and work that resonates in our lives, from Nan Goldin to Ryan McGinley. But I am also a huge fan of people who work with process and abstraction, like Adam Fuss and Mariah Robertson. I couldn’t be writing about nearly every show in town if I had narrow interests.

“When it comes to portraiture, a photograph records what is in front of the camera in a way that can be very revealing. Although they are only dealing with the surface, if a photographer is really looking and has a desire to connect with the other person, they can get at something beneath that surface. Nothing is quite so direct, confrontational, and revealing as the photograph.”

Aletti has also contributed essays to photography books including Avedon Fashion 1944-2000 (Abrams), Peter Hujar: Love & Lust (Fraenkel Gallery), Hedi Slimane: Rock Diary (JRP/Ringier), and A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs 1974-2008 by Mario Algaze (Glitterati Incorporated).

Most significantly, Aletti contributed to Andrew Roth’s The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century (PPP Editions/Roth Horowitz), a tremendous undertaking. Aletti recalls, “I wrote half the descriptive texts. It was an education for me. Many of the books I had never seen before, or even knew about. Roth had a rigorous approach and he set strict criterion. The book had to be conceived as a unit, it had to be unique. I was conscious of the sequencing, scale of the photograph on the page, the typography, the quality of the reproductions, the binding of the book. It made me aware of how important all these thing were to the experience of the book. That got me deep into photography books and what makes them work.

As a form, the photography book is over one hundred years old. It has a quality of permanence that sets it apart from all else. As Aletti observes, “The book is lasting. It preserves an exhibition for a much longer period of time. I love exhibitions because you can see the photograph in actual size and get a real sense of its presence–an experience of the physicality of the object. You won’t get that in a book. But a book lasts longer and can cover a whole large project better. Plus, I like the permanence of a book.

“So many photographers can do their best work in books. It’s many photographer’s first choice as a way of putting their work into the world. An exhibition can be more of a compromise. But if an artist has control over a book, it’s more expressive. The explosion in self-publishing has affected publishing in general. Young photographers can make books and have total control. That’s so important and energizing. I go to Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair every year. It’s encouraging that there are so many young and self-published photographers looking at the quality of books in a different way. There’s more attention to books generated by the photographers themselves. Alec Soth is one of those photographers who is really book oriented. He gets into and works through interesting projects, and the end result is a book. It can also be a show, but it won’t include all the quirky elements that he can fit into a book.”

Indeed, it is the distinctiveness of the form that makes the book unlike any other object, except, perhaps, the magazine. As a collector, Aletti observes, “I’m always picking up things at flea markets. I don’t think I’ve ever been so immersed in photography as I have been over the last few years. Being a curator, a collector, a writer connects so many parts of my life. I’m living with it in a very real way with pictures on my wall. Most of my collections are of vernacular material, things that I’ve been able to afford from small photo sales. But much more of my collection is magazines and books. I have a huge collection of fashion magazines, full of pictures by Avedon, Penn, Beaton, Blumenfeld, Helmut Newton. That collection is more important than the photographs that I own. It allows me to access a much larger world in my own apartment.”

All photos courtesy of Jason Schmidt, first published in Document Journal.

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Grant Ellis: Bless Your Heart

Posted on January 5, 2018

Photo: © Grant Ellis from Bless Your Heart, Kris Graves Projects

Formed over thousands of years of river flooding, the Mississippi Delta is an alluvial plain filled with dense, swampy jungles of cane, gum, and cypress. Early imperialists recognised the value of the land and began to clear it, draining the swamps, razing the forests, and building communities using slave labour.

Today, the region is one of the poorest, most undereducated and malnourished areas of the nation – yet it is also a place where creativity has flourished despite (or perhaps because of) rough conditions. The Blues was born in the Delta, and from its humble beginnings it went on to become of the most influential genres of contemporary music, giving birth to both rock and soul music. Add to this the literary legends hailing from the region, including William Faulkner, Walker Perry, and Tennessee Williams.

Hailing from the town of Cleveland, Mississippi, local photographer Grant Ellis spent the summer of 2014 creating a portrait of the Delta for Bless Your Heart, a limited edition from Kris Graves Projects. “I wanted to document what I saw in a place that reminded me of home,” Ellis explains.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Photo: © Grant Ellis from Bless Your Heart, Kris Graves Projects

Photo: © Grant Ellis from Bless Your Heart, Kris Graves Projects

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Photography

The 10 Best Art Books of 2017

Posted on December 21, 2017

Artwork: The Spanish Family, 1943. Oil on canvas. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner Books and Victoria Miro. From Alice Neel, Uptown (David Zwirner Books)

As the year comes to a close, the one thing we may all agree on is that 2017 has introduced “the new normal.” Forget how it’s supposed to be, this is how it is. Information and disinformation moves at the speed of light in a constant onslaught, spinning through your space like a tornado over and over again. It’s enough to drain and depress, if you allow yourself to get caught in its relentless grip.

The best way to deal with things out of your control is to redirect your energy into what is within your purview. The things you read and surround yourself with can energize, uplift, inspire, enlighten, educate, and empower you. To that end, we may turn (even return) to books for solace, wisdom, and insight from those who have been here before and had the presence of mind to record their insights.

Crave selects the 10 best art books of 2017, with an eye towards hope, justice, and understanding who we are and where we’ve been so that we know where we’re going for the sake of our own – as well as future generations.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Farah Behbehani, Love rests on no foundation II.
From Signs of Our Times: From Calligraphy to Caligraffiti (Merrell).
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/1355547-10-best-art-books-2017#iCuHZWmeUhBWIBgZ.99

Categories: Art, Books, Crave

Lucas Foglia: Human Nature

Posted on December 19, 2017

Photo: Maddie with invasive water lilies, North Carolina. © Lucas Foglia, courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery, London.

On average, Americans spend 93 per cent of their lives indoors. The lack of exposure to the most basic elements of nature takes its toll, as we drift away from our true selves and adapt to the human-made world. To maintain this unnatural environment known as “progress,” we consume larger quantities of fossil fuels, adding to the greenhouse emissions heating the earth and fostering climate change. The result is a cycle that we need to break in order to save the earth as well as improve our health.

“The news has a tendency to talk about climate change like a cliff that we’re about to fall off of,” American photographer Lucas Foglia observes. “I think climate change is a bumpy road that if we keep on driving down, we will ruin our ability to go further. At the same time, we are able to slow down and make changes and those changes are important. The average person can change their behaviour and in aggregate we can make a global difference.”

Foglia grew up on a small farm bordered by a forest, just 30 miles east of New York City – a far enough distance for him to have a distinctive formative experience. In 2006, he began taking pictures of people in nature, exploring how spending time in wild places changes us and allows us to access a deeper, more primal self. He photographed not only human activities but the landscape as well, showing the interplay between men and women with forests, deserts, ice fields, and oceans.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Photography

The 10 Best Photography Books of 2017

Posted on December 18, 2017

Photo: © Susan Meiselas. From Susan Meiselas: Prince Street Girls (TBW Books).

The photography book is like a repository of soul, a place where spirits linger long after they have left the mortal realm. Here a fragment of time is frozen forevermore so that we may gaze upon it with awe, with understanding, with curiosity and questions. It is a magical space where three dimension become two, and we can transport into other eras and other realms, into private lives and public spheres of influence.

When collected as a book, the photograph takes on another role: it becomes evidence of the past and a message to the future. It becomes something we bring into our homes and set on our shelves, awaiting the moment we choose to pick it up and nestle it on our laps, absorbing each image page by page in quiet contemplation of wisdom that speaks beyond words.

Crave has selected ten of the best photography books of 2017 that speak to who we are and where we’re been to help us understand where we’re going in 2018.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Deviant Desires: A Tour of the Erotic Edge

Posted on December 12, 2017

Katharine Gates made Furries a household name, being the first person to document this curious kink in her landmark book Deviant Desires (Juno Books, 2000). But Furries were far from the only fetish Gates researched at length, as she delved into the lives of Sploshers, Crushers, Balloonatics, Pony Players, Feeders & Gainers, and Adult Babies with exquisite care, bringing the world of kink out from behind closed doors.

Now Gates returns with Deviant Desires: A Tour of the Erotic Edge (powerHouse Books), a revised and updated version featuring new chapters on Cannibals and Foot Fetishists. Beautifully illustrated with new images that are the perfect mix of the sexy, sensual, and subversive, Deviant Desires will satisfy your inquisitive mind with fascinating stories from the sexual fringe.

“Most people are aware of the Internet’s Rule #34: ‘If it’s out there someone is making porn of it,’” Gates observes. “Kinky people are no longer thinking they are all alone in their idiosyncratic interest. Isolation is a terrible, dangerous thing. They are able to connect with other people and get support as well as tips for how to act on fantasies safely and consensually.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: Books, Huck

Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo

Posted on December 12, 2017

Photo: Still Kicking, a Polaroid of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat taken shortly before his death from a heroin overdose in 1988.Taken from Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo

Weed. Acid. Coke. Opium. Erotica. The Occult. There are many paths to achieve an altered state where mind and body blast off, leaving behind the mind-numbing banality of everday life. Fascinated by the possibilities of achieving transcendence on earth, Julio Santo Domingo (1957-2009) amassed the greatest private collection of sex, drugs, rock, and magic in the world – featuring some 100,000 books and objects by luminaries from Andy Warhol, Timothy Leary, and the Marquis de Sade to Charles Baudelaire, The Rolling Stones, and Aleister Crowley to name just a few.

Writer Peter Watts teamed up with designer Yolanda Cuomo to create Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo (Anthology Editions), the definitive book drawn from the collection, which now resides at Harvard University. Here, alongside a preview of images from the book, which has just been released, Watts tells us about Santo Domingo’s passion for enchantments of all sorts.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Office wall in Geneva illustrating both Julio Santo Domingo’s eclectic, unorthodox hanging style and the wide range of material in the library. Note the stone phallus in the center of the pictureTaken from Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Painting, Photography

Magnum Contact Sheets

Posted on December 11, 2017

We would like to believe that photographs convey an element of truth, that in the fraction of a second recorded for posterity, we have captured something that lies beyond mere celluloid of digital technology – something we can gaze upon and discover verifiable facts, unearth an ineffable aspect of reality that lies beneath the surface.

Perhaps this is possible, in as much as we wish to believe it so, but when we consider that the single frame lies in a larger body of work can we be absolutely sure that we’re not being guided by the aesthetic power of the form. Are we not sentient beings whose powers and perceptions of sight heavily influenced by the perfection of the art?

It may be the best way to know is to consider the context, in as much as it is available to us: the circumstances of the moment, the players, the photographer themselves. And, if we are to consider the artist, where does this image fall, not only within their oeuvre but more specifically in project from which it is drawn? This is where the contact sheet comes in.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Avram Finkelstein: After Silence – A History of AIDS Through Its Images

Posted on December 11, 2017

Kissing Doesn’t Kill, Gran Fury, 1989–1990, For Art Against AIDS On The Road.

During the early years of the AIDS crisis, when an HIV positive diagnosis meant certain and gruesome death, Avram Finkelstein became a pivotal figure in ACT UP, the direct action advocacy group that worked tirelessly to combat U.S. government silence around the disease.

“Power structures count on our silence, but that doesn’t mean we’re obliged to give it to them,” Finkelstein remembers. “Raising your voice is a tremendous threat, and it’s the only threat you ever have to make.”

As co-founder of the collective Silence = Death and member of the art group Gran Fury, Finkelstein worked tirelessly to raise awareness and fight the power through a powerful combination of art and activism. “When words and images are combined, their power increases exponentially,” Finkelstein explains. “We thought: Why not just sell political agency the same way everything else is sold to us?”

During his years in the trenches, Finkelstein kept a journal documenting his work, which became the basis for After Silence: A History of AIDS Through Its Images (University of California Press). “I wrote After Silence so activists in the middle of the 21st century might be able to reinvigorate the political lessons these images contain, and see them as acts of strategic resistance that relate to struggles we have yet to imagine,” Finkelstein reveals.

Here, Finkelstein shares tips for artist-activists working today to fight the power.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Artwork: Silence = Death, The Silence = Death Project, 1987, poster, offset lithography.

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Huck